Donald Trump imposed his precious tariffs this week and when the stock market predictably crashed, and when trading “partners” predictably placed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products, and as costs to all consumers for almost all products begin to rise, Trump’s response, “Only the weak will fail.” Then he went golfing.
Maybe he meant that only the POOR will fail. It was a revealing comment, emblematic of an ideology that rewards the rich and powerful while ignoring, or even punishing. the voters that got him elected. Trump has doubled down on his beloved tariff approach (“I say the most beautiful word in the entire dictionary of words is the word tariff, I love tariff, I can make anybody do anything through the use of tariffs.”). More on that in a moment.
As Trump runs recklessly through his first 100 days of a second term, he has doubled down on punitive tariffs that disproportionately hurt working-class Americans. But he is not stopping there; he’s also getting ready to re-implement massive tax breaks for billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who already enjoy historically low tax burdens.
When Trump slaps on tariffs, China and Mexico are not paying for those costs. It’s a tax that lands squarely on American consumers. In Trump’s first term, his tariffs brought many farmers to the brink of bankruptcy. We seem to have forgotten that he had to quietly deal with that disaster by issuing bailouts, an effort that might seem to defeat the huge gains that Trump promised the tariffs would create.
Yet, here we go again, in an even bigger push, despite most economic experts predicting higher inflation and potential recession as a result. The results are immediate, like the stock market results this week (down 10% in two days after the tariff announcement), and ongoing. Let’s be honest, tariffs are a regressive tax hike on everything from food to electronics, impacting lower income consumers to a much larger degree than high earners.
Pair that with the proposed tax cuts, not for the middle class, but for the ultra-wealthy, and how can that make economic sense?
The federal tax code is already skewed toward the rich. While the top-end tax rate is 37 percent (for annual income earned above $609,350.00), few billionaires pay that. According to IRS data and independent analyses from ProPublica and others, many billionaires utilize creative accounting techniques to reduce their effective tax rates to single digits, a figure less than many teachers, union workers, or police officers pay.
Warren Buffet is famous for admitting that his secretary “works just as hard as I do, and she pays twice the rate I pay. I think that’s outrageous.” At his company’s (Berkshire Hathaway) Annual Meeting in 2024, Buffet noted that if 800 companies matched Berkshire’s tax payment rate, “no other person in the United States would have had to pay a dime of federal taxes – no income taxes, no social security taxes, no estate taxes.” Think about that for a moment. Now, THINK ABOUT IT AGAIN.
It wasn’t always this way. In the 1950s – 60s, the top personal income tax rate stood at 91%. Even after accounting creativity, the wealthiest Americans paid far more than they do today. Corporate tax rates were almost triple the current rates.
Today, rich individuals and fat corporations pay far less, and America cannot afford quality healthcare or state-of-the-art infrastructure, or deal with our soaring national debt.
So, when Elon Musk, who has built much of his empire on government contracts and subsidies, and Mark Zuckerberg, who profits off our personal data, get tax breaks, it begs the question, why are we subsidizing these guys when our national debt is out of control and public services are declining. Trickle-down economics has rarely resulted in the trickle.
I see it now. Donald Trump isn’t using tariffs to balance trade. He’s implementing them to negotiate, to gain power, and to punish. Those are the things he loves. When asked if he is open to negotiations on cutting back some of these levies, the president said it would depend upon “if somebody said that we’re going to give you something that’s so phenomenal, as long as they’re giving us something that’s good.”
I expect Donald Trump will leave office, whether it’s in four years or eight or whenever, as the richest person in the world. Saudi Arabia is capable of throwing $100 billion into some Trump project in order to gain favorable policies with the United States. Other countries will see the writing on the wall and line up to get in on the bidding.
This president does not care about me, or that in two days last week, I lost six years of saving for retirement. He doesn’t care what happens to his own supporters, no matter how much MAGA swag they buy. He doesn’t care about Elon Musk or JD Vance or the mistake he made in sending an innocent man to an El Salvador prison. Oops..
He won’t care about polls, Congressional pushback, or anything else, because it’s all about misdirection; it’s a shell game and while we’re all focused on where the pea is, he becomes super-rich.
He’s got us all absorbed in how bad all this is for America but that’s the beauty. It doesn’t matter and he doesn’t care. When Trump says, “Only the weak will fail,” he’s talking about you and me. He’s going to be just fine, thank you.
Curt MacRae, a resident of Coldwater, MI, publishes regular opinion columns…
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